See What NBC Anchor Tom Llamas Said About Trump’s ‘Racist Video’ Post During Pre-Super Bowl Intro

NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas alerted viewers to President Donald Trump’s “racist video” post in the introduction to his pre-Super Bowl interview that aired to NBC viewers.

Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account at 11:44 PM on Thursday night that contains an image depicting President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes:

The post drew widespread outrage including from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the post in a statement:

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But after 12 hours or so, the post was deleted, with an unnamed White House official claiming “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”

Llamas scored a big exclusive interview with Trump pegged to air on Super Bowl Sunday, with clips rolling out in advance.The full conversation aired on Wednesday night’s edition of NBC News NOW’s Top Story with Tom Llamas.

But on Sunday night, a package of about 10 minutes of the 50-minute conversation aired ahead of the Super Bowl pregame show — and began with this introduction:

Trump addressed the video in comments to reporters on Air Force One Friday night.

REPORTER: The social media post that you took down earlier today the White House says that a staffer sent it who sent it and are you going to fire them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I looked at it, I saw it, and I just looked at the first part. It was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia. There was a lot of voter fraud, 2020 voter fraud. And I didn’t see the whole thing.

I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of a picture that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either, but I didn’t see it.

I looked in the first bar, and it was really about voter-fraud and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is.

Then I gave it to the people to generally look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn’t. They posted it and we took it down and we did it, but that was a voter fraud that nobody talks about. They don’t like to talk about that post. We took it as soon as we found out about it.

REPORTER: A number of Republicans are calling on you to apologize for that post. Is that something you’re going to do?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, I didn’t make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of thousands of things. And I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.

They had that one post, and I guess it was a takeoff. By the way, a lot people covered it. If you look at where it came from, I guess, it was the takeoff on the Lion King. And certainly, it a very strong post in terms of voter fraud. Nobody knew that that was at the end.

If they would have looked, they would’ve seen it. And probably they would have had the sense to take it down, but that was a takeoff on the Lion King. And a lot of people were covered or different in different positions, so. But I spoke to Tim Scott. He was great. Tim is a great guy. He understood that 100%.

He reacted poorly when another reporter challenged him about blaming a staffer:

Watch above via NBC News.

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